This is one of my favorite churches in London. It’s called the Parish Church of St. Luke, it’s Anglican, and it’s located on Sydney Street, just off the King’s Road. Guess who married here in 1836? Charles Dickens!

I love to sit in the adjoining garden, as well as in the café on the church porch. On my way from the Fulham Road to the King’s Road, this is the route I take while walking through Chelsea. I like looking at the different architectural styles. And the foliage. As I mentioned in another post, London is an amazingly green city.

On the Fulham Road I popped into Daunt Books. I wanted to buy Richard Ford’s new memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents. It’s a gentle and tender read, a slim volume, and full of love for his mother and father. An only child, he was raised in Arkansas throughout the late 1940s and 50s. Ford has a slow, measured cadence to his writing. I wonder if growing up in the South has something to do with that.

I had a long chat with the woman in the photo below. She works at Daunt and she gave me lots of recommendations. As we moved around the tables, she picked up books and asked if I had read them or knew the author. At one point she asked if I liked Rachel Cusk. “Yes,” I said. “I read Transit and another book she wrote about the end of her marriage, I can’t remember the title.”

“I’m the cousin of Cusk’s ex-husband,” said the Daunt bookseller, a tad defiantly.

“Oh,” I said. An awkward pause ensued and then I added feebly, “Well, the book was very good.”

And now I’ll give you a book recommendation. I purchased many books in London, but the best one of all, which I found on my own at the Eurostar terminal just minutes before boarding the train for Paris, is this: East West Street by Philippe Sands. Throughout the entire train journey and afterwards, I didn’t put it down for a second. It’s a compelling read, and masterly written

Winner of the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction